PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

draw when pursuing different livelihood strategies requiring coordinated
actions (Scoones 1998; Ellis 2000; DFID 2001).
The access to these assets is influenced by (1) social relations as class,
ethnicity, gender etc., (2) institutions, which refers to formal and customary
rules, conventions, and codes of behaviour, and (3) organisations, implying
groups of individuals bound by some common purpose to achieve certain
objectives. These endogenous factors are further affected by exogenous
factors such as trends and shocks. The modified assets exist in a specific
context, which form the livelihood strategies of a household. These
livelihood strategies are sets of activities that are pursued by households
to generate means of survival (Ellis 2000). Strategies are categorized
differently by various scholars. For example, Ellis (2000) has classified
strategies according to the nature of the resources used into natural and
non-natural resource based activities, while Scoones (1998: 4) identified
three broad livelihood strategies: agricultural (intensification of existing
agricultural activities) diversification by adopting additional productive
activities; and migration to develop productive activity elsewhere. It is
important to note that these are not exclusive, and may be combined in
practice.
These livelihood strategies determine the household’s livelihood security,
measured, for instance, by income level, seasonality, and degree of risk.
The individual strategies, and thereby the activities occupying the
household, also affect the environmental sustainability of the households’
resources and the surrounding which they depend on (Ellis 2000).
2.2.3 Critique of the Sustainable livelihood approach framework.
Although the sustainable livelihood approach framework assists in
situating an analysis of Turkana people’s livelihood strategies within the
wider context of change, this study subjects it to a critique. A major
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